The administration is “playing a double game,” argued Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tighter immigration restrictions. “They’re telling (pro-immigration) advocacy groups that they’re focusing on the worst of the worst” by committing more resources to the most dangerous undocumented immigrants. “But they’re telling the broader public they’ve achieved record levels of deportations. It’s a clever spin.” So what are the facts? Nearly 400,000 individuals were removed from the country in fiscal year 2011, which ended September 30, according to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. ICE Directorohn Morton trumpeted the news, calling it the result of “smart and effective immigration enforcement” that depends on “setting clear priorities for removal and executing on those priorities.”

So we deport a record number of people, many of them violent criminals (the focus of scant resources). Critics, which are always going to critical, complain that Obama didn’t deport everyone and spend no money doing it.

After watching what happened in Alabama, and how the ideologues reacted to that, don’t expect them to allow reform to happen even with record levels of enforcement. There is simply no level of enforcement that will satisfy them.